If you thought that the Toy Story franchise was as low on power as a Buzz Lightyear running on a set of rusty AAs, you would be right.
Woody may these days have a paunch (which he hoiks up behind the brass buckle of his belt every now and then) and a bald patch (even plastic hair suffers from wear and tear), but this latest chapter of the deservedly popular animated blockbusters returns to the dog-eared formula of the cowboy and his fellow loyal toys being forsaken by those they exist to please and nurture.
Writer and director Andrew Stanton, who was there at the beginning with the Oscar-nominated screenplay he co-wrote for the first Toy Story back in – can you believe it? – 1995, has not let go of the idea that toys are the victims of a child’s capricious affections. However, here the cause is something that all parents will recognise; the scourge of the screen.
Tech is the enemy here. Eight-year-old Bonnie has no wish to give up such physical friends as Forky and Beverley, the plastic-cutlery characters whose wedding will climax in them being declared man and knife. But when her parents hesitantly order Lilypad, a green smart tablet whose chat rooms the parents hope will provide their crushingly shy only child with some friends, the effect is like giving a toddler hard drugs. Actually, we know now that is exactly what algorithms are. They create an addiction and then feed it. That this film is released in the very week the government announced a forthcoming ban on social media for under-16s is pure coincidence. But the movie makes the case for the new law better than any ministry could.
Meanwhile, Stanton infuses his old idea with such wit, pace and humour it brushes away the sense established early on that this film is rehashing old ideas. Lilypad is the hilarious sinister embodiment of the tech that has made moulded plastic characters extinct. “Not again!” cries Dinosaur.
However, cowgirl and sheriff Jessie is having none of it. She knows that the children who Bonnie makes friends with in Lilypad’s chatroom are not real friends. And so it proves when girl is cyber-mocked by her new virtual clique for briefly revealing that she still had the urge to play with her old toys.
My favourite of these is Pizza With Sunglasses, who is the epitome of abandoned playmates. They never even made it on the A-list of toys that were wrapped up and given as a present. Rather they were somehow accumulated as bit-part players in a child’s progress, and it says a lot about their deep understanding of childhood that this film’s creators give Pizza With Sunglasses a place in their story.
Even if it is in the shed where abandoned toys live, having being shunned after their children became crazed by screens.
Toy Story 5
Certificate: PG
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